This article is an opinion based on facts and is meant as infotainment. Don’t freak out we updated it for 2019.

Article continues below. Subscribe To HomeSnacks On YouTube:

No one wants to believe that they live in a dangerous city. But the fact of the matter is that your city may not be as safe as the city next door.

But instead of running and hiding under the covers, it’s better to get informed — which cities in America should you pay a little more attention to your surroundings as you walk home from work?

It turns out that, based on the most recent FBI Crime data, St. Louis, MO has maintained its throne as the city with the highest crime rate. It ranked as the most dangerous city in America for 209 based on the data.

This our fifth time ranking the most danerous citis in America and St. Louis takes top the top for the third time.

Here’s a look at the top ten most dangerous cities in America:

You might be thinking to yourself at this point — where’s Chicago?? Isn’t that some kind of post-apocalyptic, world war 3 type city? Well, it actually ranks as the 62nd most dangerous with a pretty normal overall crime rate.

And while these places are some of the most dangerous in America, you have to remember America is a safe place to live relative to the rest of the world. Be glad you don’t live in Caracas, Venezuela where the murder rate is 2x higher than any US City (Here’s looking at you St. Louis).

Read on to learn more about our methodology or skip to the end for a full chart of the data with the crime rate for each city.

Home to a specific type of BBQ (grilled) and a specific type of crime (violent), St. Louis ranks as the most dangerous in our analysis of dangerous cities.

While it might not win as many honors for its BBQ, St. Louis takes homes the distinction of having the 2nd highest violent crime rank among all big cities in America. It’s the dot way out to the top in the graph higher on the page.

So when you cross the street in The Gateway City, in addition to looking both ways for cars, you might want to look both ways for murder, or at least aggravated assault.

Memphis is the largest city in the top ten, coming in with a population a cool 100K larger than Albuquerque.

What else is larger in Memphis than Albuquerque? That would be the violent crime rate, which ranks as the third highest in America. That also implies the property crime isn’t as bad as some of the other cities ‘featured’ here.

Homer would be sad to hear that Springfield (in this case Missouri) ranks as one of the more dangerous cities in America.

The issue is property crime — Springfield ranks as having the worst property crime per capita of any city in the country. It didn’t end up taking the #1 overall most dangerous spot because its violent crime ranks outside of the top 10.

We’re sure Walter White wouldn’t be surprised to see Albuquerque on the list. Although, its ranking is due more to property crimes than violent crimes. The second largest city in the top ten has the fifth highest property crime rate.

While people continue to migrate from San Francisco to Oakland to avoid insane property prices, they aren’t moving to avoid crime. Oakland ranks over thirty spots higher than San Francisco on the crime ranking.

So there’s that stat Oakland has over San Francisco, at least for now.

Drilling down into the statistics, Oakland has the 10th highest violent crime rank in the country and the fifteenth highest property crime rate. That gives it a firm placement in the top right dangerous quadrant of the graph above.

I hate to even spend any time on this, but here are facts. The number of burglaries in a population does not equate to danger. Pueblo, CO has it’s city angst just as do others. Where your facts about unemployment come from are baffling; According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pueblo’s rate of unemployment as of March was 3.7%, not 12%. The saddest part is that this kind of rubbish journalism brings down entire communities- and they start to believe it themselves.
If you’d like to ever stop by to experience our town, I’ll show you a burgeoning university that was Division II national football champions a couple of years ago. I’ll show you a great community college with a national ranking. I’ll show you great neighborhoods virtually untouched by crime. I’ll show you a fantastic arts center with a recognized children’s museum, and a slew of other great museums. I’ll take you to one of three independent theater companies. I’ll show you our convention center that is about to undergo a huge expansion, right on our beautiful and growing Riverwalk, Bith of which are funded by our citizens. I’ll introduce you to proud citizens that tax themselves to spur economic development. We have a beautiful parks system, zoo, and internationally accredited fire and police departments. We enjoy Broadway shows and concerts in our newly krestored city auditorium. The Colorado State Fair has called Pueblo home for over 100 years.
We are a rough and tumble, blue collar town that continues to survive the downturn of our steel industry while adding new green businesses.
Paul Harvey extolled the virtues of our city, as I am certain you would as well if you spent some time here.
Pueblo is a city that I am proud to call my home. And I refuse to let less than 1% of our population who choose to be criminals define who we are.
Please stop by, I’ll gladly show you my town!

Thank you so much for your comment. You said it better than I ever could have. I live in Springfield Missouri and this list is damaging to say the least. Springfield is a wonderful City and doesn’t deserve this rap.

As a fellow Springfield resident, the list does make Springfield to seem like some kind of hell on earth, but let’s be honest also: the burglary/theft rate is absolutely astronomical here at the moment. It’s sad, but every town has the problems. At least it’s property crime and not violent crime! 🙂

So did you just accidentally skip over or intentionally decide not consider the paragraph in bold on the FBI page this article links to? You know, the one that says this data is inaccurate and incomplete and should not be used for comparison or ranking because it would lead to inaccurate results that are misleading? It then gives you a link to learn how to do correctly apply statistics to crime data and also how to acquire complete data.
You sir, are part of the problem. Intentionally misleading people and keeping them ignorant, scared and angry. Hope your paycheck for this “false reporting” got you a couple of Chili’s dinners at least.

What a bunch of morons at this rag!!! It clearly says not for comparing cities by this data, yet they publish it and claim it as fact in bold print! Uggghhhhh! I hope no one graduated college that works roadsnacks as my faith in higher education is falling by the second!

I do not believe this, I know that Macon, Ga. is not the place it was in the 90’s when I was a home health nurse there, I don’t even want to drive through it now…must less work as a home health nurse…too dangerous.

Your so called Facts are absurd, Athens Tn.a small Country town is no.6 most violent crimes,Blaaaaaaa! I LIVED there 30 yrs my son still lives there! TOTAL BS!!!#! MEMPHIS Tn. I live here its absolutely the most Violent Racist City in America!

I tripped over this site accidentally as a link turned up in search results while I was tracking down info on a couple of sickmaking murders w/a name in common (MT/perp & CA/victim), of course found the name intriguing – who doesn’t love to eat on the road? – and even got a little warm-fuzzy moment at its location since I have friends in Durham. It looked @ first promising as a source of information alternative to city-data. While in the stats at the end I was happy to see that my hometown of Washington has dropped to 27 from 44 in this category, before getting there on reading this 1 article, I was shocked at its sloppiness. I was given to wonder before reading the 5/9/17 comment by Mark as to this contributor Kolmar’s education level, but it’s long been my view that them as have some framed Piece of High-Class Toilet Paper [1976] on their wall somewhere, aka college diploma, whether on TV or in writing, routinely express themselves with jawdropping inarticulateness [e.g. TheWeatherChannel, which is busted out with such overeducated idiots]. I practically dread to see anymore of this site after this, since just this 1 sample is riddled with not only the most ridiculously easy-to-avoid/correct typos [FOUR!!! in ONE sentence alone! (4th paragraph)], but this Kolmar here addresses his readers in the most patronizing/condescending fashion, “how typical” of newsdummies, e.g. “It’s the dot way out to the top in the graph higher on the page” re: St. Louis. “Not exactly appetizing scenery” to either eat by or spark hunger for more. Kudos to the Snackers for their hardly easy work setting all this up, but if this 1 sample is demonstrative of its overall execution – including the other readers’ enlightening observations – then, as in the tearjerking yet uplifting 40-year-old G. Rafferty song [different context], they “still got a long way to go” to achieve solid legitimacy. But they’ll fall as short of that mark as a 75-yard field goal try if they merely go Screw ‘Em! & continue on their unmerry way farting out their common-senseless Kollege Knowledge, structurally & statistically. “That would be … unfortunate.”